Random lockup problem

[T.D]

Hey all, long time lurker, first time poster. Many thanks for all the Civ/SMAC tips and strategies I've gleaned from these forums. Not sure if this particular forum is appropriate for technical problems - let me know if it's not.

I recently installed SMAC on my laptop (1.2g Athlon, 256mb, WinXP). Patched it up to 4.0, but didn't install the 2000/XP patch. I had some initial problems with lockups because of sound, but these were fixed by setting eax and ds3d = 0 in my Alpha Centauri.ini file.

Played 2 or 3 games through with no problems whatsoever. Just within the past few days, however, I've started getting the lockups again. I checked the .ini file, and my settings are still in place. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to the lockup points - sometimes it'll lock twice in the same place on consecutive loads, sometimes it'll breeze right past it. They're not occuring at any regular frequency either: sometimes it's after 3 minutes of play, sometimes 45 minutes. These are hard locks, requiring a reboot of the system.

You can imagine that this is very annoying, especially since the game was working fine previously. I made no changes to the system before the lockups started, btw, and have tried reinstalling twice. The 2000/XP patch had no effect, not that I expected it to.

Has anyone had or heard of any problems like this? Any advice or suggestions at all would be most welcome.

TD

[Azedalis]

Well just like sound cards, I find that alot of lockups are due to other programs running in the background. XP is normally pretty stable but these lockups are normally caused by things like popups. If you are using a DSL/Cable modem, you will be prone to lockups on games designed in the early Windows era (Win 3.1/Win95). Even firewalls and Virus checkers are known for causing problems in games. Also realize that AC uses graphics that are low level for current graphic cards. When a second program tries to run at a different resolution and color range...it might also cause problems. My computer shows real bad graphics if I Tab-Alt out of AC. I imagine it could lock a computer up.

One more thing. Get all the Microsoft Updates...these actually allow even older programs to run more reliable. And uptodate drivers are also a must. Keep your system clean by running programs like Adaware could also help. I hope I was a little helpful.

ZigZag

[T.D]

Thanks for the tips - I'll try terminating all of the extraneous processes. I use the laptop as a secure development platform, so it stays firmly offline, but there are still a few mysterious HP programs running in the background that I haven't bothered to investigate yet. Alt-tabbing doesn't give any problems outside of the screwed up colors, thankfully. I would hate to have to print out Vel's guide.

I turned off the mouse wheel through TweakUI yesterday after doing much reading in the ancient topics here. Haven't had any lockups since, but I've only played once since then for around 45 minutes, so it may or may not have helped.

Thanks,

TD

[HeymlicH]

surprisingly, smac graphics are eating up alot of resources. It is the same as with 3D shooters. Some laptops can't handle it over a longer time.